Apple TV 4K Listing Appears on Amazon as Prime Video Launch Nears

The Apple TV 4K is currently listed as out of stock, but the fact that it has been added back is fueling speculation that Amazon may be prepared to launch its Prime Video app on the tvOS App Store imminently.

At its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple confirmed that Amazon Prime Video is coming to Apple TV later this year. At its iPhone X event earlier this month, it reiterated that release date.

Top Rated Comments

Good news. Too bad I'm going to have to continue the inconvenient process of manually switching between 4K HDR and 1080p SDR, in order to keep from getting fake HDR and poor upscaling applied to most of the Prime catalogue of offerings.

Amazon: “no thanks, too lazy to develop the app. And because we don’t have the app, we don’t want to sell your product as it doesn’t benefit us.”

Apple: “...”

Yes, almost certainly Apple is the saint and anyone else is the devil. In some other universe it might have gone like this:

Amazon: "To make the Prime app available on AppleTV, we want the same special financial deal you gave Netflix, rather than pay the full amount right off the top"

Apple: "No, we like our fatter margins, even if you would be storing & streaming all the content that might be purchased through your app from your own infrastructure."

Amazon: "When you give us the same deal you've given Netflix, we'll be interested. In the meantime, since you are not willing to compromise on a mutual win:win, we'll stop selling your AppleTV too."

Apple starts developing a 4K:apple:TV while others are already long-since there. Those others also have mostly the same apps as Apple PLUS Amazon Prime. Apple wants to launch with as much 4K content as possible. Someone internally decides to grant Amazon the same special deal in exchange for some Amazon concessions like selling the product on Amazon.com again. Amazon accepts and starts developing the app.

Apple at WWDC announces the Amazon Prime app coming soon.

Amazon develops the app, re-lists AppleTV in the store and then launches Amazon Prime.

Apple is more competitive with other 4K boxes by adding the Prime app and Prime 4K content. Apple still gets a pretty lucrative cut of Prime revenue and realizes sales of AppleTVs through the Amazon store. Amazon gets exposure to millions of new prospective Prime subscribers and gets to actually make some added profit (per the special deal) rather than give that extra to Apple. Consumers can get the last major missing streaming service from their preferred STB device. Win:win:win.

Now, your scenario could be correct and mine could be wrong, but I generally think about it in a "follow the money" way. Your scenario has Amazon being too lazy to profit on some segment of millions of AppleTV owners and refusing the retailer profit on selling AppleTVs in their store to boot. I'll concede that Amazon could be "lazy"... or evil... even at their own profit expense. But I'd bet my scenario is much more likely than yours (even if it fails to cast Apple in a purely saintly vision).

Amazon: “no thanks, too lazy to develop the app. And because we don’t have the app, we don’t want to sell your product as it doesn’t benefit us.”

Apple: “...”

I thought it was more a case of Amazon wanting to sell their own content through the Amazon Prime store, so don't want to sell a device (AppleTV) that will enable consumers to buy their media content elsewhere.

What model display do you have? Are you saying the Apple TV doesn't upscale from 1080p to 4k that good?

I have a Sony 65X900E. Best upscaler I've ever seen. ATV is not as good in direct comparison. But it's not just the upscaling. I still have to switch into 4K HDR from 4K SDR, or the Apple TV will apply fake HDR to the upscaled 1080p picture, as well as any other non-HDR signal. Very little 1080p content is in HDR, and not that much 4K at present either. And by forcing my ATV to accept 4K settings, it bypasses other signal processing the Sony TV does when upscaling 1080p signals.

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